Grandmas Walking With Weighted Vests
I sometimes imagine a world where everyone is walking outside with weighted vests on. I think we are almost there. Your cousin Sammy, whose idea of exercise used to be walking to the fridge in the garage to get a beer, was seen in Omaha on Tuesday walking with a weighted vest. He did also have a beer in his hand.
I see people running with weighted vests, and I want to punch them at the same time as I am happy they are that fit. It’s always a quandary when you see a former version of yourself running past the older caricature of yourself while the wind blows through both of your hair.
Weighted vests are like podcasts. Everyone has one. Your brother’s antisocial high school friend, Aaron, is now crushing it with an anthropological podcast about how humans evolved from chimpanzees. He has two vests in his hall closet. One is a blue finance bro vest; the other is weighted and black.
We might get to a time when parents stop sending their kids to school with water bottles and start sending them with a baby weighted vest. They will probably come in all flavors: SpongeBob SquarePants, Shrek, camo, whatever.
Can you imagine you go to pick up your grandma to take her out for lunch and she says, “Hold on, sonny boy, I forgot something.” She comes back out thirty seconds later with a pink weighted vest. You shrug, but also lament the fact that hers is better-looking than yours.
If Brian Johnson is right and we can all live forever, I wonder what the new age will be where a weighted vest is too much to carry? 136?
© Jonathan Greene, September 11, 2026
